New-found confidence among businesses is driving “modest” rises in wages across the board, with “spectacular gains” for some, the 2014 Cooper Lomaz Recruitment Salary Survey has found.

Employers are looking well beyond county boundaries to fill senior posts vital to firms’ acceleration plans, says the Bury St Edmunds-based recruitment firm, whose own business is booming.

The survey, which provides a regional barometer of employment and remuneration trends, found that vacancies are drawing candidates attracted by the lower cost of living from London and beyond.

Operations director Mark Fletcher said: “Employers are displaying more confidence in planning for the future, but many are frustrated by the lack of candidates with the niche skills they need to drive those plans forward.”

The big earnings winners are those with niche skills in engineering, information technology or energy or those with a wider more commercial or strategic skills base, particularly in accountancy and marketing.

“The 2014 salary survey findings are a positive endorsement of the buoyancy of the East Anglian jobs market that there are a lot of quality positions paying good salaries which need filling,” said Mr Fletcher.

The trend is expected to continue as long-awaited trunk road improvements develop, including a fully-dualled A11 which is due to open during 2014, speedier rail links and faster broadband speeds. “Faster transport links will also mean it is easier for people to travel between regional centres to work,” said Mr Fletcher.

Salaries continue to be markedly higher in Cambridgeshire and those parts of Essex nearer to London.

One of the “boom” areas for recruitment in Suffolk and Norfolk is the oil, gas and renewables sector.